Vancouver’s New Green Roof

Whilst perusing the internets today I stumbled upon this wonderful video: a short film by filmmaker Dave Budge about the roof of the newly-completed Vancouver Convention Center (that cool-looking building they built beside Canada Place to house the media broadcasting center for the Olympics).

The video is by itself a spectacular piece. Budge does an amazing job of composing and combining the elegant aluminum and glass landscape of metro Vancouver with the natural beauty of Burrard Inlet.

What’s just as exciting is the subject of the film: the Convention Center’s 6-acre ‘green roof’ which is made up entirely of native plants and which forms, in effect, a living, breathing and self-sustaining above-ground plot of coastal grassland.

Though I’m not much of an authority on green architecture, this video immediately reminded me of an eye-opening TED talk I saw two years ago given by William McDonough about sustainable design. One of the things he talks about in his presentation (which covers a sprawling array of green design issues) is the economic and environmental sense of green/agricultural roofs:

It’ll be interesting to see what kind of a reaction Vancouver’s new green roof will get come February 2010, and whether the city will see more of these projects in the future. I, for one, wouldn’t mind seeing one or two of these pop up around UBC.

Nick is an undergraduate studying history and economics at UBC. Nick is interested in international relations, philosophy of mind, creative writing, design, marketing, and a bunch of other things. Nick produces music, does graphic design, and sometimes plays tennis.